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J. Lawton Winslade Teen Witches, Wiccans, and "Wanna-Blessed-Be's": Pop-Culture Magic in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.In a series about vampires and magic, where words have visible magical effects and vampirism itself is based on a quite literal contagion, Buffy seems a perfect text to explore such linguistic and performative productions. Yet, the series is only a fraction of a larger discursive field, where "witch" and "Wicca" are constantly thrown about. Because of the media attention and popularity of the movement, Wicca has ... More >>>

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In a series about vampires and magic, where words have visible magical effects and vampirism itself is based on a quite literal contagion, Buffy seems a perfect text to explore such linguistic and performative productions. Yet, the series is only a fraction of a larger discursive field, where "witch" and "Wicca" are constantly thrown about. Because of the media attention and popularity of the movement, Wicca has been presented in various lights. In the first season of the popular CBS series, Judging Amy, a child custody case is brought to trial over the mother's Wiccan beliefs. In one of the few instances when television has presented a somewhat realistic view of the neo-pagan community and its inner politics, a representative of the Wiccan Anti-Defamation League - a real organization started by well-known witch Laurie Cabot (Berger 77)--decides not to defend the mother because of fear of negative publicity. Intriguingly, Scooby-Doo, one of Buffy's spiritual forefathers, and the source for the core group's nickname - the Scooby gang--features Wiccan themes in its full-length video, Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost. In the Scooby-Doo movies, the monsters are real, as the advertisement is fond of saying, and this witch is a real witch.

However, she is initially presented as a Wiccan, a midwife and town healer during Salem times. The cartoon's anachronistic use of the term is further complicated by the fact that the so-called "Wiccan" is actually the evil witch, and the intimidating fang-wearing local girl band, the "Hex Girls" who call themselves "ecogoths" ("and we don't need your approval!") are the real Wiccans, only becoming aware of their powers at the climax of the film. In the closing credits, when the sexily animated "Hex Girls" are singing about casting spells and respecting the Earth, the message is clear. In these instances, along with whatever identity defining characteristics can be derived from such works as Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and The Blair Witch Project, among others, the form that the contemporary witch takes based on media representations is quite a strange one. What media adds to popular folklore, then, is how the witch is constituted as a subject through language, or, to borrow Butler's borrowing from Althusser, how the witch is "interpellated," thus "given a certain possibility for social existence"